Saturday, December 31, 2011

It has been more than five years after the murder of CO David McGuinn at the Maryland House of Correction. Jury selection in the trial of the first of his two alleged killers begins Tuesday* in Anne Arundel County.

5. It gets better-ish. The arc of the moral universe is long and full of dings, dents, and crack-crazed seagulls, but it eventually, slowly bends towards not sucking as much. So it went this year for the state's gay and transgender citizens. In spite of the Senate passing the gay marriage bill, it died in the House. In March, Tyra Trent was murdered, and in April, Chrissy Polis had the tar beaten out of her at McDonald's. But it is now possible for a baby to have two mommies on a birth certificate (if said mommies married elsewhere), and starting next month, Baltimore county employees who were married in other states can receive same-sex benefits.

4. Phylicia Barnes, a 16-year-old honor student, went missing December 28 of 2010, and a long, pitiful search by police and family ensued-- one so desperate, police were taking tips from Cham. Barnes' beauty, youth, apparent innocence and mysterious disappearance seemed a perfect fit for Natalie-Holloway-level national hysteria and hand-wringing, but Barnes was apparently not blonde enough* for the national media, which ignored her case until Anthony Guglieimi shamed producers into briefly spotlighting her disappearance. Barnes' body was found in April in the Susquehanna, the medical examiner ruled her death a homicide, but still, no one's been arrested yet.

3. Mayhem at the Select Lounge. Chaos reigned at West Franklin and N. Paca on January 9: 42 shots fired, Officer William Torbit Jr. and reveler Sean Gamble killed, four citizens hit with bullets. But after an eight-month independent investigation, no charges were filed, no changes were made to BPD procedures, and FHB III concluded that officers "acted reasonably."*

2. Baltimore swore in a new prosecutor, Gregg Bernstein, who was promptly never heard from again. To be fair, press releases have finally started trickling out in the past few months, and as promised, office staffers did get their BlackBerries and the do-not-call list was abolished*. But it's uncertain if the office is actually more functional than Jessamy's was: in August police complained about prosecutors stalling and "hindering"* cases.

1. Murders, shootings and unclassified deaths are down-- way, way down. From 335 murders in 1993, to 223 last year, to possibly under 200 in 2011, which will make the murder rate lower than it's been since the 1960s. The drop in violent crime is not just a local trend, but a nationwide thing (hellz, crime is even down in Detroit!), and theories abound as to why. Cops having better technology? The right people finally going to jail? Have we "bupe" to thank? We may never know for sure, what whatever it is, we'll take it.

Monday, December 26, 2011

City Hall was shut down for a little while this morning due to a bomb scare. Turned out it was just a food container and a t-shirt, though the BCPD intelligence section is taking over the investigation now.

A 30-year-old man was shot in the face in the 100 block of South Monroe St. on the 23rd.

Two people, a 20-year-old and a 26-year-old were shot in the leg on the 24th in Poppleton, specifically the 100 block of North Freemont Ave.

If there weren't a lot of Christmastime homicides this year, it wasn't for a lack of effort. Two more people still were shot in West Baltimore, inthe 700 block of West Lexington St.

Finally, an arrest has been made in the Woodlawn stabbing death of Kevin Regusters. Registered sex offender George Robert Evans Jr , 35, was charged with first degree murder on Dec. 22 for his role in the stabbing death.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Violence in SW Baltimore is related to the shooting of a "legend," says FHB III-- a legend named Stanley, who is apparently as slippery as a greased pig on a Teflon pan*: "Armed robbery and handgun charges were dropped by prosecutors in 2008, and he was found not guilty of attempted murder in 2004. In 2007 he was convicted of drug possession with intent to distribute and sentenced to eight years in prison, but seven years and four months of the sentnece (sic) were suspended."

Towson Town Center shooting victim, Rodney Vest Pridget, was not picked at random and not robbed*, county police say. He was also once convicted of roughing up a guy and stealing an Xbox.

A Baltimore grandmother who was beaten with a hammer by her own 14-year-old grandson in March has died. 67-year-old Shirley Garrett died in the hospital after receiving the fatal injuries from her grandson Hassanhii Garrett, 14. Hassanhii was charged as an adult with attempted murder before his case was juvenile court. This murder replaces the murder of Cristopher Gilliam on the homicide list, after his killing was deemed justified.*

Dajuan Marshall , 29, The leader of the Bounty Hunter Bloods has been sentenced to life plus 20 for kidnapping and fatally shooting Kenneth Jones the leader of the Pasadena Denver Lane Bloods.

The Sun has released their top 10 local news stories of 2011. Crime stories making the list were the Select Lounge shooting, the McDonald's assault of a transgendered woman, and the Wire's Felicia "Snoop" Pearson being arrested and later convicted for her role in a drug ring.

Grand Prix officials have until Dec. 31 to pay back the more than 1 million dollars in taxes they owe to the state. County police are trying their hardest to emphasize that the fatal shooting of Rodney Pridget (Pictured Right) was "absolutely not a random act." Which is good, in the sense that regular citizens aren't being robbed and murdered, but it's still pretty cruddy no matter what.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Two men were shot last night, leaving one dead. 29-year-old Donte Lamonte Collins was shot and killed at the 1500 block of North Rosedale St. Yet again, there is a bit of confusion with how his name is spelled, with District Court records calling him Donte, while Circuit Court records spell it Dante. Unless someone says otherwise, he will be listed as Donte in the homicide tally.

County Police have id'd the man shot to death at Towson Town Center. Rodney Vest Pridget, 19, was shot in what police are calling a "targeted shooting" although they have not given any reason as to how they have come to this conclusion.

An arrest has been made in the shooting of a city cab driver. Maurice Alvin Turner Jr. has been charged with first degree murder after being identified as one of the two men who robbed the cabbie. The other man has not been identified. According to court records, this is Turner's third arrest for attempted murder after being charged in May of 2007* and June of 2008* respectively. Turner was given a 30 year sentence with all but 5 years suspended for the second attempted murder charge.

Life plus 20 for Kelly Shird, age 28, for murdering Craig Bouie in 2010 during a break-in gone bad.

The man shot by county police during a home invasion in Dundalk has been id'd as Christopher Kane Bernert, 27. Bernert is now facing a bevy of serious charges, including attempted murder and armed robbery.

Dayon Barnes, 27, was shot and killed while sitting in a car in the 200 block of N. Smallwood St. Barnes made local headlines last year after being part of a money counterfeiting group with Erik Desmond Stokes and Darryl Bacon. Stokes was shot and killed by County police during apprehension. Barnes and Bacon were arrested without incident. Both men had their cases Nolle Prosequi earlier this year. With Barnes dead Darryl Bacon is the only member of this ring left, although he is currently wanted out of Annapolis for parole violations.

The Sun has id'd the guy shot on Elsinore Ave. as 23-year-old Lawrence Edwards. While every District court charge he has calls him by Lawrence Edwards, all his circuit court charges spell his name Lawrence Edwardes. I'll stick with Edwardes for the moment until I hear otherwise.*

21-year-old tattoo fanatic Dalonte S. Dunston was the 5th and final person charged with a robbery murder in little Taneytown, MD.

Finally, proving that your never too young to be mind-bendingly creepy, 21-year-old Scott Seidel was given a two year sentence for impersonating an FBI officer on teen chat-rooms while simultaneously pretending to be a hacker, all in order to convince girls to strip on webcams. Creepier yet, as recently as last year Seidel lived in the Donnybrook Lane apartments, located a few hundred feet from Towson High School, which is full of young women the same age as the girls he targeted online. So to sum it up, what a scuzzbag.

The FBI has (finally!) changed the definition of rape to remove the requirement that the victim is a woman, the weapon is a penis and the "forcible" part. (So what did they call "the Sandusky" before? Plain old sexual assault, I guess?)

And how about that NDAA? So long habeus corpus, bye bye Bill of Rights. We've arrived at a point where unaccountable persons in the government (or serving corporations that subcontract for the government) can read your email, decide they don't like it, and stuff you into a van, never to be heard from again. Obama is expected to sign NDAA today-- if so it'll be exactly 220 years and a day after the Bill of Rights was ratified. There's a lot out there written about it (too little, too late), the IB Times has a good compilation. Of the Maryland Delegation, three voted for it: Hoyer, Ruppersberger and Bartlett. In the senate, Milkulski and Sarbanes both voted against.

Got an email from the Justice Policy Institute expressing aggravation that while prison populations are down nationwide, Maryland's prison population is up. Of course one's first gut reaction is, I don't want to pay $40-60 a day to feed, house and clothe 1.8% more assorted fuckweasels and fudgeclowns. But-- could it be-- dare we imagine-- that the growth in state prison population is a sign that homicides and shootings are down because police are arresting the right people, prosecutors are bringing better cases, rapes are being investigated and prosecuted and the jury pool is sucking slightly less? Note that per Gary Maynard, 40% of MD's prison population is from Baltimore City, 25% is from PGC, 15% from Baltimore County, and the state's other 21 counties make up the rest.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Nelson Bernard Clifford, a sex offender who just beat rape charges, was linked by DNA to two more rapes*. And was also charged with a rape last month. He was also charged with failing to register as a sex offender, but the circuit court dropped those charges, 10 days before he was charged with rape again.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

From January 1 until today, there have been 549 homicides and shootings so far in the city, compared with 942 in 2000.

The city closed about 1,000 more felony cases this year than it did in 2010, thanks to reorganization of the docket and the addition of a second administrative judge.

Deaths in which the manner was undetermined are way down, from 331 in 2007 to a virtually unprecedented 154 so far this year, said David Fowler of the ME's office. (Most of these are drug-related, with the ME's office unable to determine if a heroin addict injected themselves or was injected by someone else, which would make the death technically a homicide).

Arrested citizens released without charges are also way down from last year, with the city releasing 70% fewer arrestees with no charges than last year-- 4,875 fewer people.

And finally, homicide arrests: 93 so far this year for 189 homicides, for a tidy 50% clearance rate.

Of course, every rose has its thorn, and the one currently bedeviling the city's backside is property crime. So far this year the BPD reports that home-invasion robberies with a gun are up 25%, rape arrests are up 63% (of course we have an inkling as to why that might be*), burglary is up 12%, and commercial robberies with a gun are up 75% over this time last year.

So why so few shootings, murders and overdoses, and why so much robbery? Is the judicial system just that more effective this year? Is the economy turning former shoplifters into armed home invaders? All or none of the above? Mysteries abound...

Timothy Ray Berry of Owings Mills copped a guilty plea to illegal possession of weapons and explosives: he shot a kid in the leg with a BB gun, which led the FBI to search his house and find his stash of C-4 explosive material, an M-800 pyrotechnic device, containers of potassium nitrate and potassium chlorate, smokeless shotgun powder, model rocket igniters and motors, pool chemicals, various fuse materials, PVC and metal pipe of varying lengths and pipe fittings. (And he would've gotten away with it, if it wasn't for that kid!)

The Occupy Baltimore encampment is gone*. Police evicted them peacefully around 3 AM this morning with no arrests being reported.
(Un-paywalled-story here at the SF Chronicle, and video from Fenton*, who apparently never sleeps and/or was tipped off by someone... - MJ)

Can police check a passenger's immigration status during a traffic stop? If a passenger in a car has a history of arrest for armed robbery, can he be lawfully patted down for weapons? Can Spanish-speaking prospective jurors be dismissed if they aren't sure they can ignore any Spanish they encounter in favor of a translator's translation? All these questions and more answered in TDR's roundup of Fourth-Circuit Court of Appeals' Opinions

From the Evergreen listserv:

Video Americain [on Cold Spring Lane] was robbed on Wednesday, 7th of December at 9:30PM. We have a description of the robber who claimed to be wielding a firearm (which was never shown) and assaulted one of our employees before robbing us: African-American. 5'8 or 5'9. Skinny. Short dreads. Tribal-looking tattoo under left eye. Also noticed a smaller one near his right eye.

Police in Towson have arrested a man for committing a series of Goodwill store robberies. Richard Carvan Pettaway, 29, who also happened to be a former employee of the Padonia store, was busted after showing he seriously lacked goodwill. (That was terrible...)

More speed cameras have gone up around town for a total of 142 (!!) -- noticed a new one on North Charles St. southbound at Blythewood (by Loyola) when some Speedy McJerkwad in front of me got the flash, a location that notably not on this list. Not a bad idea to check the list-- then drive like a grandma anyway.

Why so stabby, Baltimore? Another fatal stabbing, this time a 45-year-old man in the NW*; in the 3500 block of Woodland Ave. Update: Fenton ID's the man as Christopher Gilliam, and says a female "of interest" is in custody but not charged.

A woman was robbed of her cell phone by a guy driving a Cadillac and wielding a baseball bat; in Abell a would-be robber was disarmed by employees; a 7-Eleven robbed in Remington in the North Baltimore Patch blotter.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Update, here's the Sun story*, the WBAL story (featuring an old clip that includes character witness John Heath: "the Paul Schurick that I know was a person who went in the hood ... and he hung out in Old York Road with the brothers.")

Stolen copper gutters, yes, latest trend, no. In spite of feeble legal attempts to crack down on the sale of stolen metal, homeowners are still getting (literally) ripped off... exacerbating the suck, homeowner's associations are forcing some residents to re-purchase the luxury gutters.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Good Jeebuz! Three men were arrested last night after a four-hour, two-county crime spree that involved 12 victims, including a man stripped naked, another man shot in the eye and the leg, and a wrecked Lincoln Continental.

The prosecution rested yesterday in the robo-call case, after Julius Henson's employee Rhonda Russell, who recorded the "relax, everything's fine" message, offered the lamest excuses ev. er., testifying that the calls were "reverse psychology ... I was told this call would stimulate whoever wanted to vote for Mr. Ehrlich." Never mind that the calls went only to Democrats or that Russell's notes included the phrase "suppress turnout in black communities." Not every member of the black community is horrified by this, though. Wrote Mr. Hassan MrPolitics Giordano on the Facebooks, "First their aim was at Julius (Henson), and still is quite frankly; now they're looking 2 hang Frank Conaway?! I guess an outspoken black man who doesn't have 2 rely on them 2 gain fortune & fame better learn their place huh?! SMDH...#BlackMan'sRights??"

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Drug dealer, convicted double-murderer and amateur lawyer Anthony Grandison is headed to the Court of Appeals* for the sixth time. Grandison is currently on death row for hiring Vernon Evans to kill David Piechowicz and Susan Kennedy in April of 1983.

Fenton and Hermann follow up on TAB's tip that Darnell Kinlaw, charged with car theft in the Annie McCann case as a teenager, has now been arrested for killing Lakeisha Player and stealing her car*. Kinlaw was apparently out of jail due to the magic of concurrent sentences and credit for time served.

And another murder arrest, Jerome Burgess Jr.*, 19, has been charged in the murder of 25-year-old Tavon Toney, who was robbed and killed walking on Franklin St. Incredibly, reports Fenton, this is Burgess' fifth arrest this year.

Greenmount Avenue merchants worry about crime. Remember when you could go there after dark, get a Pupu platter at Uncle Lee's and browse for books at the bookstore across the street? Old person sigh ...

The Sun has updates on another murder arrest alongside that of Jerome Burgess Jr. Arrested for the murder of Lakeisha Player was Darnell Kinlaw Jr., 21. *

If the name Darnell Kinlaw sounds familiar, it might be because of his peculiar involvement in the Annie McCann case. McCann, if you don't remember, was a 16-year-old girl who ran away from her Virgina home, only to end up dead in a trash can in Southeast Baltimore. Kinlaw's involvement in the case only revolved around his having been charged with stealing her car. Those charges were later dropped, much to the chagrin of McCann's parents.

One has to wonder if a man already accused of a murder of one woman might have had a larger-than-thought-of role in the death of Annie McCann. That is, of course, all speculation. What isn't speculation is the fact that Darnell Kinlaw was in no way supposed to be free at the time of the alleged murder of Player. He had been sentenced to 3 years and 4 years, respectively, in two different cases in January of 2011. Even with prior time served and parole after having served half of his sentence, there is still no reason why he would be released any earlier than early-to-mid 2012. A shame all around.

Monday, November 28, 2011

... so what did I miss, Baltimore?
It looks like police arrested one Alvin Ray Wright Sr.*, 48, for the rape of a 13-year-old girl in an abandoned rowhouse on N. Caroline Street in October. He doesn't have a record of prior sex offenses, just drug and car-theft charges, but DNA evidence implicated his evil ass after his sample was given high priority in the testing queue.

The Conaway/Meister drama continues, and here's a nugget that will make you crap a book on how to puke: Conaway's lawyer J. Wyndal Gordon says Conaway is being investigated because both Meister and Bernstein are Jewish*: "When you have a situation where you have a Jewish victim and an African-American male, you have things happen differently than if it happened to be a regular case ... perhaps because of their commonality in their religion."

Ehrlich aides' robocall trial kicks off today. Hilariously, the wife of the judge in the case got one of the calls, but Judge Lawrence Fletcher Hill says that won't affect his judgment.

Bernstein has hired a young hotshot to do some prosecutin' up in the state's attorney's office*, heading up a division that is "new" and "major." His notable achievements so far include attending basketball games, making a baby, and encouraging prosecutors to paint their offices (with coveralls over their suits, one hopes).

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

The case against notorious drug kingpin Stephen Blackwell has come to a somewhat anti-climactic ending when Blackwell (Pictured right in the first picture I've ever seen of him) pled guilty to heroin conspiracy charges as well as a variety of other non-violent crimes.

While Blackwell was never charged with any of the violence that threw him into the spotlight, he was believed to have been at the head of an organization that engaged in a violent war, resulting in the shootings of 27 people. All of the violence started with the April 2008 abduction of brothers Stephon and Sterling Blackwell. Interestingly enough, young Stephon is already following in his older brothers footsteps, with an early 2012 trial for drug dealing and a conviction for prescription drug fraud already on his record.

This abduction set off a war between the Stephen Blackwell organization and the Terrell Allen group. Allen, 38, is also serving a federal prison sentence for possession of ammunition. No end-all prison fight between the two drug leaders will likely occur due to Terrell Allen likely being released in January.

Oh, too funny. The MD state police report that the handgun Frank Conaway, Sr. may or may not have "brandished" while he was or wasn't chasing Adam Meister has an expired permit. If it's true that Conaway left his property with the gun, he could be facing a month in jail. Oh, my. Conaway is the Clerk of the Court, so his job is to file and maintain the court's records and legal documents. Yet he groused to Justin Fenton, "I was never notified. I think there's an obligation on the part of the state police to notify." ... uh, really? If anyone knows that kind of information shouldn't it be the Clerk of the Court?!
... here's a WBAL interviews with "strong young guy" Adam and "I could have taken care of him otherwise" Frank.

.. and why is no one asking (or telling) exactly what Adam said to Frank?

Baltimorean Terry L. Wilson goes to Indiana, robs convenience store, gets shot, dies. Assuming it's the same 20-year-old Terry L. Wilson in the Judiciary Case search, in 2007 he was charged with attempted murder and the case was remanded to juvenile court. In November of 2009 Wilson was again charged with attempted murder, in 2010 he was convicted and sent to jail.